What constitutes political repression

One of the ideas that has been preoccupying me lately — the Left’s definition of political repression — appears as an American Thinker article. Here’s the beginning of my article:

I’ve been dismissive of Democratic charges that the Bush administration is suppressing dissent. I think that I, in common with most people, define government suppression of dissent as a situation in which the government tortures, imprisons or kills dissenters. For example, just a month ago, Akbar Mohammadi, an Iranian dissident who was imprisoned for participating in an anti-government protest, died nine days into a hunger strike against his prison conditions.

Castro’s Cuba is another example of what it really means when a government represses citizens who dare to voice criticism. Only three years ago, the Cuban government sought life terms for seventy-eight Cubans, including more than thirty journalists, who had the temerity to question Castro’s regime. After a one day kangaroo trial, the “lenient” court eschewed life sentences and, instead, limited the inevitable convictions to terms ranging from twenty to twenty-seven years.

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Your descriptives are superb – empurpled rhetoric conveys the vein popping hysteria on the uberleft. I almost popped a vein myself when I first heard of the numbing naivete of someone who could actually believe they could have had a chat (if we could just dialogue with them!!)with Hitler and stopped his march into Poland – and then was informed that person was Senator William Edgar Borah in 1939.

Marquerite zeroed in on my favorite word – empurpled. Usually I don’t think about picking out one particular word as my favorite, but there’s no contest here.

It’s harder to pick one paragraph to comment on, but this one –

“It’s easy to make jokes about this type of manic sensitivity. After decades in which people were encouraged to contemplate their navels, get in touch with their feelings, and let it all hang out (no matter how badly it really should be kept in), it’s hardly surprising that we’ve created a political generation that finds torture in a tongue lashing.”

– really hits on something I never thought about before. It makes perfect sense. Too bad the Left thinks they should be able to go through life without ever getting their “widdle feewings hurt.”

Brilliant! Liberalism has become a philosophy for emotional retardates. The hypersensitivity to verbal criticism is symptomatic of the collective arrested development of contemporary Liberals. They’re like those schoolyard bullies who, as soon as they were confronted, ran to teacher and whined that they’d been unfairly attacked.

jond

You are not only a fast typist – heck, I’m a fast typist – but also a fast thinker and researcher. Hats off. This is a great piece. Many of my leftist friends worry about oncoming repression – the focus of their concern is the Patriot Act, wiretaping and so on.

What is really worrisome, though, is the number of really otherwise smart people who accept conspiracy theories on the flimsiest of evidence – for example, the fact that “W” continued reading “The Hungry Cateripllar” for 7 minutes is considered evidence that he knew the attacks were coming. It used to be that conspiracy theorists were smelly guys with thick glasses who spent their days in donut shops and, essentially, didn’t have lives. No more.

One of the peculiar anamolies of modern American politics is that people who claim to stand for science against teaching of creationism (rightly, IMHO) are the same ones who buy the consipracy nonsense.

Ymarsakar

It’s not that they really believe you’re the oppressor, although the cannon fodder troopers do. It is that the leadership uses the rhetorical slogan that you are an oppressor, in order to accomplish what Castro accomplished. Install his own regime to fill the power vacuum after the “oppressors” have been annihilated.

Obviously the Democrat leadership wants power, and if they can get it by feigning a fight against oppression, then sure they’ll take it.

The ability to recognize false slogans from real objectives, is one of those tricks of propaganda. Various socialists and fake liberals in Cuba’s past and Iran’s past, were too guillible and stupid to do the wise thing in this fallen world. They had the money to escape, but what happened to the weak that had to stay in Iran and Cuba and suffer the consequences of the Glorious Revolution backed by those fake liberal intellectuals, eh? If you think the Democrats can control terroists, foreign and domestic, then you should see what happens when nobody can own handguns in the US legally.

The Democrats will have little trouble getting rid of people who disagree, when they have disarmed the United States population and installed something called the “Special Police Department for Anti-Terroist activities”, analogous to the PC Police (except with real weapons) and the Committee of Public Safety.

We have the people advocating for a fortress America, pull everything in, and do the police state siege game. And we have the people who want a “mix” of police powers and military, also known as martial mixed with law. Martial Law.

Roosevelt, after all, died before WWII ended. There is no Harry Truman to take over in the Democrat party now, once the “relocation camps” are setup.

Mary

Excellent!

Not only do leftists not want their widdle feelings hurt, they also don’t want terrorists’ feelings hurt either. I’m feeling very depressed lately about how we’ve lost touch with the dangerous world we face.